Book Review: Stuck-Up Suit by Vi Keeland and Penelope Ward

Shh…I bought this book for the cover (hence the credit for the model and photographer). It was the fastest one-click I’d ever done, and I don’t regret it one bit. The cover model is Dusan Susnjar and the moment you open the book and read about Soraya Venedetta’s morning on the train to Manhattan where she spots Mr. Stuck-Up Suit barking on his phone like he’s a god, you know Dusan couldn’t be any more perfect as Stuck-Up Suit or MBP (another nickname Soraya gives him) himself, Graham Morgan.

Soraya is a girl after my own heart, an Italian-American Brooklynite, who commutes to Manhattan everyday where she works for an advice column, Dear Ida. She’s snarky, and she’s brash. She doesn’t sugar-coat things, which is what Graham needs to snap him out of his self-important funk when she returns the phone he dropped on the subway. For a man in charge of investment portfolios of the uber-rich, that he doesn’t even have a password for his phone was so unprofessional, but hey, what better way for Soraya to be able to look through his pictures to learn more about him before she returns his phone? They actually don’t meet because Graham doesn’t think she’s worth seeing until he reads the text message she leaves him and it hits him where it hurts.

And suddenly the chase is on.

Graham lives up to his nicknames, Stuck-Up Suit being the main one, and there were others like MBP (you’ll have to find that one out), although Poopface in Manhattan sticks with me right now. He’s arrogant as heck and has built such a wall around him after weathering some major personal storms, but it’s no excuse for how he treats the people around him. Underneath the tough exterior is a man-boy in a way, with some cute quirks that foreshadow one big twist that comes up. And did I say that Dusan is the perfect Graham Morgan? I totally get how these book conventions totally work when the cover models show up alongside the authors. They f-sell books!

What follows is a smart and witty and sexy banter between the two and I was rooting for them all the way, although by the time they end up in bed way before the 50% mark, I knew something was coming to tear them apart. And boy, did they come, and some of them I spotted a mile away. But I’m Team Graham Cracker all the way so I’ll go along with them. I wish there was a bit more depth to some of the characters, especially the ex but there wasn’t and it baffled me to see the wealthy depicted the way they were-shallow all the way. Except for the new Graham, of course, because Soraya has long p-whipped him back down to earth.

One of the things I loved about Stuck-Up Suit is the setting which is the very best city in the world (to me), New York. And not just the Manhattan part of New York, but Brooklyn, too, and Queens. There’s a bit of the Hamptons, but it’s been sanitized to look too perfect and shallow that I didn’t care. If you pay attention, you’ll even know how to get to the East River from the 1 Train in case you need to toss some guy’s phone away.

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